FTC Disclosure: Harper Collins Publishers has graciously provided me with an audio version of this book for reviewing purposes. Aside from this courtesy copy, I have received no payment or services in exchange for this review.

Summary:Dr. Bill Brockton is a world-renowned forensic anthropologist – yes, like the chick from Bones – who teaches at the "Body Farm" in Tennessee, an institution for hands-on training in forensic science. It is summer when Dr. Brockton gets a call from a former student and a forensic specialist with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, asking for his assistance with her sister’s murder investigation. An investigation that Angie St. Claire is conducting on her own after the small-town cops in Georgia deem her sister committed suicide by laying down on a couch and sticking a shotgun down her throat hours after she and her husband had a fight. Bored to death with classes over, papers waiting to be graded and articles waiting to be written, Dr. Brockton rushes to the assistance of his student. While visiting Northern Florida (more southern Alabama really), an old skull from a murdered child is discovered and the Florida police ask Dr. Brockton to take a look. As the bones start piling up and witnesses start getting killed off, a diary from the 1960s shows up to light the way.

Scientific Suspenseful Heartbreak:

A) The Science

In many ways, this series and this novel blur the edges of reality and fiction. The author’s afterword explains in detail exactly which parts of this novel are true, but even without giving anything away, the basic science underlying the novel is factual. First of all, Jefferson Bass, like Ilona Andrews, is really a pen name for two writers. One of the authors, Dr. Bill Bass, like the fictional Dr. Bill Brockton, is a world-renowned forensic anthropologist. The Body Farm, at which the fictional Dr. Bill teaches, is a place that the real Dr. Bill founded, officially known as the University of Tennessee's Anthropology Research Facility. Because the real Dr. Bill writes a first-person point of view of the fictional Dr. Bill, there’s tons of information on forensic science that’s accurate, or at least sounds accurate to me. For the most part, this was well done, but like in A Discovery of Witches, the academics are sometimes a bit too much, and although I appreciated it, my mind did wonder.

B) The Suspense

The book is a mystery and a thriller, but I’ve listened to plenty of mysteries and thrillers that fail to engage the reader. The Bone Yard works. It’s all in the pacing. So you’re listening to the scientific information, to the description of the scenes, to the description of the hotel, of a memory, and then the sentences start getting clipped. The descriptions start slowing down, and zooming in. It’s almost as if there’s that creepy background music behind the words. You know that something’s coming around the corner, and when it does, you still jump. There aren’t many such situations in the book, but when they pop up, they catch you.

C) The Heartbreak

Early in the audiobook, Dr. Bill describes watching a documentary on child soldiers of Sudan, and how listening to something so horrible done to a child made it difficult for him to sleep at night. That’s a precursor to some of the parts of this audiobook. When the police start to suspect that the skull they found dated back to the 1960s, I was a bit disappointed. It’s hard for a listener to connect to a tragedy that happened far away or long ago. That’s where the diary comes in. Jefferson Bass does a great job writing from the point of view of a very young boy. Of course, it’s written much better than most adults can tell a story, but the voice is sincere and authentic. It grips the reader immediately. You empathize with the boy, feeling what he feels. And that’s pain. The main conflict hurts to listen to don't listen to it before going to bed.

On Narration:

This is the first time I listened to an audiobook read by Tom Stechschulte, and the first thing I noticed was how much he sounded like an adult Tom Hanks. His voice has a nice tenor to it that works well with the narrative tone in The Bone Yard. It’s part film noir and part professorial. I was a bit put off by Tom Stechschulte's female voices are off, but inauthentic female voices are rather usual for male narrators. That aside, Tom Stechschulte’s villain voices are epic. He actually puts a slight growl in the reading.

1 comment:

Free speech is a beautiful thing that I truly support but does not exist on this Site. If you use abusive or vulgar language, I will delete your comments. If you feel you have something very important to say, however abusive or vulgar, please feel free to start your own blog.

About Me

I am an alter ego and pen name of a 29-year-old attorney who writes and reads - or rather, listens to - urban fantasy and paranormal mystery novels.
Follow me on Twitter: @LostArtAudio
Check me out on GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5005625-dharma-kurlind
Check out the FAQs at the bottom of the site!

Rating System

5 out of 5 - Incredible. So well written it hurts. You should buy this audiobook, listen to it, then listen to it again.

4 out of 5 - Very, very good. It is so good, it'll sit in the back of your mind and make you long for the next in the series.

3 out of 5 - Very good. Entertaining, satisfying and worth a good long listen.

2 out of 5 - Good. Buy it, listen to it, and move on. It's exactly as advertised, and worth the time.

1 out of 5 - Disappointing. You're not going to see this rating on my Blog. If I find an audiobook a 1, I won't review it.

Reviewing Policy & Inquiries

If you are an author, promoter or publisher who would like an audiobook reviewed here, please email me at Dkurlind [at] gmail dot com to work out a time-frame.

Please keep in mind that only audiobooks are reviewed. Also, please keep in mind the genres addressed in this Blog are limited to urban fantasy, urban horror, and paranormal romance, thrillers or mysteries.Related genres are welcome, including young adult, high fantasy, science fiction, high horror, mysteries, thrillers, romance, and suspense. I will not review non-fiction or erotica.

Reviews include published cover art, a spoiler-free summary, available excerpt links, audiobook details, narrator details, and links to other site reviews.All reviews will be posted on this Blog, Amazon.com, Audible.com, Goodreads.com, and Twitter.

My Blog List

Followers

FAQ

Q. Why audiobooks? Are you blind?

If I lose a contact, sure, I'm blind as a bat.In all seriousness, I review audiobooks as opposed to the written book because I don’t own a single one of the many Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Thriller books I review.Instead, I’ve purchased their audio recordings.Shocking just how much money I spent on audible.com over the span of the last year. Why audiobooks?Because my alter ego – the one who has a Social Security number and a driver’s license – is an attorney who spends most of her time reading off a computer or inspecting tons of documents.Also, [shameless plug alert] I’m currently working on my own urban fantasy novel, The Lost Art of Hiding Among the Dead [/spa]. This means I spend 90% of my waking life using my eyes reading.While I love paranormal mysteries, if I spend any more of my time on reading, I might lose my mind as well as my vision. Audiobooks allow me to go through one to three books a week, but while moving, driving, running, or cleaning, instead of crouching over a manuscript.

Q.All your reviews are positive.Do you love every book you listen to?

Hardly! There are tons of books I’ve downloaded that were a waste of time, money and effort and I can think of a few, off the top of my head, that have inspired me to: (a) roll my eyes every 15 minutes; (b) write hate mail (but not send); (c) re-listen to them again spurred by an irrational belief that there must be a plot in there somewhere, I just know it; (d) give up after less than an hour; and (e) demanded my money back. However, in this Review, I choose to operate under the old adage of “if you haven’t anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”Truth is [shameless plug alert], as someone working on a novel myself, The Lost Art of Hiding Among the Dead [/spa], I understand how difficult and time-consuming it is to write a novel.Then consider how difficult it is to find a literary agent, an editor and a publisher, and then become well-read enough to have the novel converted into an audiobook.Even the worst book is a product of blood, sweat, and tears.Fortunately, there are enough wonderful books out there that deserve praise. However, if you're that curious and would like to see my list of awful audiobooks to not download under any cost, email me, and I’ll share, but I refuse to pooh-pooh someone’s life’s work publicly on this blog for the sake of airing out my own frustrations.